Labor maintains lead over Coalition in latest polls as election nears

The Labor Party is on track for a win in the upcoming election with the latest polls indicating Scott Morrison still has a battle on his hands to maintain the top position.

The exclusive Ipsos poll for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age has revealed while the Coalition is closing in on Labor overall, Shorten is gaining momentum as the country’s preferred prime minister.

According to the poll the Coalition has gained one point since the previous poll, sitting on 48 compared to Labor which has maintained its votes at 52.

However, since campaigning has ramped up across the country Aussies have turned their support to Shorten with 40 per cent of voters hoping the opposition leader will take out the top job compared to 45 per cent who support Morrison.

While the Liberal party leader is still in front, the gap is tightening with only 5 per cent between the two leaders compared to 11 per cent in the previous Ipsos poll one month ago.

Meanwhile The Australian has also released its latest Newspoll results with little changes in statistics from the week prior. The poll revealed Morrison was still under significant pressure with Labor leading the two-party preferred vote 51 per cent to 49 per cent.

This was a small boost for the coalition since March with votes at 46 compared to Labor’s 54 last month. The Liberal Party had maintained its lead in the primary vote with 38 per cent while Labor dropped one point down to 36 per cent since last week.

As for the smaller parties, One Nation increased by one point to 5 per cent of the primary vote,  the Greens on 9 per cent and the United Australia Party on 4 per cent with a drop of one point.

With less than two weeks until Australians head to the polling booths politicians are pulling out all the stops, doing everything they can to gain support.

At Labor’s Federal Election campaign launch in Brisbane on Sunday, two surprising former PMs joined forces as a show of support for Shorten. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard – who both famously stabbed each other in the back for the top job in 2010 and 2013 by causing leadership spills – sat together at the official launch.

They were also joined by former PM Paul Keating and laughed and chatted from the front row at the event at Brisbane’s Convention Centre.

Read more: What feud? Gillard and Rudd reunite as Labor launches election campaign

The major theme of the event was unity, with everyone from Penny Wong to Tanya Plibersek and even Shorten’s own wife Chloe talking up the qualities of the political party. Shorten himself praised the leaders who came before him during the event.

He said Keating was a “wonderful source of advice to me and my colleagues” and described him as an “inspiration”. He also thanked Rudd for his hard work when he was PM – particularly for his historic apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008 which he described as something he would “never forget”.

“Kevin, that act of leadership, that act of decency, that act of healing wasn’t just a great Labor achievement, it was a great national moment,” he said. “It proved and you proved that government at its best can speak to the better angels after the Australian nature. Thank you very much. We will never forget it.”

When it came to Gillard, he thanked her for calling for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse in 2012.

“You had the humility to listen, the courage to act and because of you, justice is no longer denied to thousands of our fellow Australians,” Shorten said.

What do you think of the latest poll results? Do you know who you will vote for in the election?